Monday, June 22, 2009

West Coast Modern Home Tour

Harbour House, 2008

Saturday July 11, 2009 from 12 pm to 4pm Home Tour Reception from 4pm to 6pmCheck-in for the tour is at the West Vancouver Museum from 11 am to 12 pmBuses depart at 12 pmCall 604-925-7270 or click here to Register!Course Code: 630467$ 100 includes tour bus, tickets for door prizes and reception

Do not miss the chance to visit five architect designed and award winning private homes in West Vancouver!

The West Vancouver Museum’s annual West Coast Modern Home Tour takes place Saturday July 11 from 12pm to 4pm followed by a reception held in a spectacular home designed by Battersby Howat in 2005 that received Western Living’s Best in the West Award.

Bonetti House, 2005

Arthur Erickson’s 1989 Eppich Residence II is constructed using custom-made structural steel and is a special highlight of the tour. Other houses include the 1958 Gerson Residence by Wolfgang Gerson built on a steep treed slope on the west side of Sentinel Hill and the 1960 Houg Residence. Although the original architect of the Houg Residence is unknown and the house fell into disrepair over the years, the current owner has taken on an extensive renovation to restore it. The most recently built home on the tour is located on a south-facing slope of an almost inaccessible granite cliff: The 2008 Harbour House by Blue Sky Architecture builds on the traditions of West Coast Modernism blending nature with carefully designed architecture in a rugged coastal setting.

A complete information package, with details of the tour homes, will be made available to tour participants when they check-in. Please register in advance by visiting the Museum’s website http://www.westvancouvermuseum.ca/ or calling 604-925-7270 with the program code 630467. The fee for this tour, $ 100 per participant, includes a guided bus tour of five homes and a wine reception with fine appetisers and a chance to win one of several unique door prizes. Registration is limited- -so register early to ensure a spot on the tour!For more information, please call 604-925-7179 or visit the Museum’s website.

Sea to Sky Geology Tour-Back by Popular Demand

Join us for a guided geology tour along the Sea to Sky highway, which will be led by an experienced geologist, David Cook, on Saturday June 27, 2009.

This one day geology bus tour will take you along the east side of North America's most southerly fjord (Howe Sound) where you will see such geological features as debris flows and the engineering that has been used to tame them, ice sculptures rock surfaces, beehive hills raised deltas, a hanging valley, glacial erratic boulders, glaciers, and ice fields, a volcano and basalt that flowed beneath a glacier. All these features sit upon 400 million year old metamorphosed volcanic rocks and 100 million year old granitic rocks that form the backbone of our North Shore mountain.

Do not miss this one day tour, filled with interesting information!To register, please visit: webreg.westvancouver.caThe code for this program is 630117. $ 40 per person.The bus is scheduled to leave the West Vancouver Museum at 9 am and return to the Museum by 5 pm.

Photo: A group of people standing in front of a lava flow, which flowed from the Garibaldi volcanic centre about 10000 years ago. Note the jointing, which formed as the lava cooled. In the Sea to Sky geology tour, we will make a stop here and see this feature.